


A Standing Start

by elfin



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-13 00:25:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19588099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elfin/pseuds/elfin
Summary: Crowley's a dramatic bitch





	A Standing Start

In all of the six thousand years they’ve know one another, there hasn’t been a time when Aziraphale couldn’t find the demon Crowley, or Crawley as he’d known him for the first four thousand years or so.

It’s the Monday morning after what was a fairly eventful weekend, what with them helping avert the apocalypse, allowing themselves to be kidnapped in order to scare the bejesus out of Heaven and Hell in order to win themselves some breathing space, spending an extraordinary amount on lunch at the Ritz which turned into dinner, and finally dropping into their respective beds in their respective homes just before midnight on Sunday. 

After allowing himself the luxury of a long, late breakfast, all of the Sunday newspapers and a couple of pots of orange blossom oolong tea, Aziraphale picks up the telephone and calls Crowley with the intent of returning the very generous favour of yesterday and taking him to lunch, somewhere expensive. There’s a little place just outside Oxford he’s always wanted to try. 

Crowley doesn’t pick up, so he leaves a trite little message about getting out of bed before the end of the year and hangs up, expecting a call back within minutes. It doesn’t come. An hour later, he calls again and there’s still no answer. A fission of worry crawls into his stomach, and after pacing the shop for a couple of minutes he decides to go over to Crowley’s flat in Mayfair. Just to check he’s okay, just to make sure Hell hasn’t seen through their little deception and come for revenge. 

Crowley’s flat is locked, not that it stops Aziraphale and Crowley knows it won’t. He pushes open the door, casts about for a sense of other demons and gets nothing. It’s empty, but he checks anyway, just in case…. There’s no sign of Crowley, no sign of a struggle, nothing’s out of place. He murmurs words of encouragement to Crowley’s phenomenal houseplants, trails the lightest of fingertips over the statue depicting an Angel and a demon wrestling (at least he thinks that’s what they’re doing, some days it looks like something else), peeks into the dark bedroom with its massive four poster bed and very little else. 

As he passes through the office, he remembers that the landline isn’t the only telephone Crowley has. He isn’t sure what the number for his mobile is, but he thinks he has it written down somewhere back at the shop. He’s worried enough that he miracles himself home. 

He finds the number in the little book next to his telephone. He calls it, and gets the modern version of his voicemail so he hangs up and calls again. This time, finally, Crowley answers. He just says, ‘Bandstand,’ and ends the call. 

He takes the bus to Battersea Park. He doesn’t have to wait for one. He’s never waited for one - as far as he’s concerned, London has the best public transport system in the world. He’s a little less impatient with the tube system, and a lot more cautious about taking it because Crowley has developed a habit of shutting parts of all of it down as it suits his needs, to prevent someone being in the right or wrong place at the right or wrong time, to stop an event from happening or to make sure one did. Even, on one occasion, because he had a hangover and the rumbling of the trains under the city were making it worse.

The bandstand is in the centre of the park. They tend to meet here when it’s later in the day, or at night, because otherwise it can get too crowded. But today people are giving it a wide berth without knowing why. As Aziraphale approaches he reaches out with his senses - his angelic senses - before he’s in range for his human ones to work. He can’t smell blood, can’t feel pain or fear, but when he gets close enough he can see his demon pacing back and forth in the confines of the iron railings.

‘My dear….’ Aziraphale greets him as he steps into the bandstand with some trepidation. The memory of the last time they met here is fresh in his mind. 

/‘You’re ridiculous!’/  
/‘It’s over!’/

‘Crowley, whatever is the matter?’

Crowley stops in his almost frantic movements and Aziraphale’s glad; they’re too much like the last time. 

Suddenly he’s just a few steps away. ‘If I ask you something, do you promise to tell me the truth, absolutely, with no caveats?’

‘Of course.’ He stands his ground, but Crowley doesn’t come any closer. 

‘All right.’ He takes a deep breath and starts talking like he’s been rehearsing the words. ‘I know why you wouldn’t leave with me, back before the whole apocalypse… thing. I was being a coward and you were still trying to save the world even when I’d given up.’ Aziraphale doesn’t say anything. There’s a question coming sooner or later and he just has to wait for Crowley to ask it. ‘But you didn’t actually say no.’ He pauses. He’s standing with his weight on his front foot, obviously looking for some reaction in the angel’s expression. Aziraphale schools his face carefully, not giving anything away. ‘If we’d reached the end, if we’d failed to stop it and Armageddon had started, would you have come away with me then? If all was lost and there were no more chances? Would you have gone with me?’

Aziraphale regards him as fondly as he ever has, and nods. ‘Yes. Of course. I wasn’t saying no to you and I am sorry I didn’t explain myself better. I’m sorry I turned my back on you, lied to you, didn’t… tell you everything. It’s not that I didn’t trust you, and it definitely wasn’t that I don’t like you because you were right - I do. Very much, you know I do. I love you. But I honestly thought I could stop it, save everything, if I could just talk to God because I truly believed that She wouldn’t let it happen, that She would be on my side, stop the war and save everything if I could just speak to Her….’ He trails off. Crowley’s staring at him in a way he can only describe as ‘Gobsmacked’. ‘What?’

‘What?’

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘Why am I…. Can we rewind slightly. You said… something.’

‘I think I said a lot.’

‘Something specific.’

‘What?’

He honestly doesn’t know which part of his whole ‘I’m sorry I turned my back on you at the end of the world’ speech has got Crowley so wound up. Quite frankly, they both said things that afternoon that shouldn’t have been said, but over six thousand years it wasn’t the first time and he’s certain it won’t be the last. 

‘Angel….’ 

Oh. Did he say….? Could he possibly have let slip…? 

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’

Crowley closes the gap between them, pushes his sunglasses back up into his hair and looks at Aziraphale with wide, reptilian eyes that are soft with something he’s always interpreted as hope. ‘Why not?’

He says quietly, ’Because you don’t want to hear it.’

‘Surely that’s for me to decide?’

‘You haven’t wanted to hear it in the past.’

‘When? When have I ever said that? What have I done to ever make you think that?’

Aziraphale tries to think of a time, but it’s only his own voice of warning he can hear, his own unvoiced words. Never allowing themselves to say thank you, never allowing themselves to say what they felt, covering up feelings with long, extended lunches and late night drinks, sharing time and space when anything more intimate was blocked by danger and the fear that Heaven or Hell could be watching and both sides were an equal threat. 

‘You haven’t done anything,’ he admits quietly, embarrassed to say it out loud, speaking to his own feet because he can’t say any of this to those beautiful, expressive serpentine eyes that he loves so dearly. ‘I did it for both of us, without asking. And I’m sorry. But I had my reasons. I was scared for you. I thought all I had to worry about was a reprimand, maybe getting called back to Heaven. But you… Hell wouldn’t be so forgiving. I couldn’t be the reason for your destruction, I couldn’t give them a reason to distrust you. You never betrayed them. I mean, you’re a demon. Everything you did, everything we did, it was under your remit wasn’t it - tempting an angel to, well, tempt. You could say you were doing what they asked of you all along - causing trouble. But if you knew I loved you, if I told you and you told me back…. I was so scared it would all be over. I was so scared I’d lose you-‘ 

He looks up and stops talking. Crowley’s an inch from him, tongue darting out to lick his lips. ‘What about now?’

‘Now?’ He can’t seem to drag his eyes any further up than Crowley’s mouth now they’ve settled there. ‘Now… I don’t suppose there’s any danger anymore.’

‘So it’s safe for you to say it. Safe for me too. I love you, Aziraphale, you know I do.’

‘Well, yes. I’ve known for-‘ Crowley effectively silences him, kissing him with such gentle longing Aziraphale loses all semblance of angelic grace and pushes his fingers into flame red hair, smashing their mouths together, stepping forward and pushing up so that Crowley almost loses his balance. Hands on his shoulders steady them both but don’t push him away, don’t attempt to separate them. One hand in fact moves to cradle the back of his head and Crowley’s tongue presses between his lips, strokes over his own. He moans into Crowley’s mouth, something between happiness and frustration; why did this take so long? Why is it happening here, now, when the ground looks so hard and it’s just starting to rain-

-he’s pulled forward and they land on Crowley’s huge bed with a gentle thud.

He laughs because he can’t stop it. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt happiness like this before. ‘A minor miracle?’

‘A very minor one. There’s a signalling failure on the Piccadilly Line and I didn’t want us to lose momentum.’

‘A signalling failure?’

‘I was in a bad mood.’

‘That’s why I never take the tube.’ Aziraphale’s certain there’s only love in the way he’s looking at Crowley, maybe high up on the scale, somewhere up around worship. He takes Crowley’s sunglasses out of his hair and reaches over him to put them on the table next to the bed. Then he runs a fingertip down the front of his shirt and pops the buttons without breaking a single thread. Pushing Crowley on to his back, he climbs over him and kisses him again. ‘Too much time wasted,’ he murmurs, and Crowley smiles.

‘Whose fault is that?’ 

Aziraphale knows he could have had this a long time ago. ‘So let me make a start in making in putting things right.’


End file.
